Accomplishing
a logic-defying feat, the wealthiest nation in the world has
“attained” the highest rate of homelessness amongst developed
countries. 3.5 million human beings experience homelessness each year
in the United States. Almost a million are homeless every night.
(1)

In the most heavily militarized nation
in the history of the human race, 30% of its homeless men are military
veterans. (2) What happened to “support the troops”?
Obviously once military personnel return home, the slogan changes to
“good riddance to bad rubbish.”

Ready for some “shock and awe” on the home front? According to the
National Mental Health Association, “on any given night, 1.2 million
children are homeless” in the United States.

And what is one to make of a self-proclaimed Christian nation
(overflowing with material resources) that allows such travesties of
economic justice to persist?

How can a Christian nation ignore the compassionate teachings of
Jesus?

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I
was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and
you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and
you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. Then the
righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry
and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And
when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and
gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison
and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you,
just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my
family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25: 35-40)

Yes, it is morally and ethically
abhorrent that there are indigent, starving, and homeless human beings
in a society of people awash in a sea of wealth.

Yet it gets even uglier…

According to Sixty Minutes, the latest extreme means for teens
to alleviate adolescent ennui involves savagely beating the most
vulnerable human beings in the United States.

This so-called “bum hunting” has resulted in the murder of at least
one homeless person per month for the past 60 consecutive months.
Accurate statistics are elusive at best (since few people notice when
a homeless person “disappears”). However, the National Coalition for
the Homeless determined that 500 of its lost souls have been victims
of “bum hunting” since 1999. 180 of them met violent deaths as a
result of this appalling blood sport in which the hunters stalk human
prey. (3)

What could inspire children to commit such depraved, barbarous acts?

Sixty Minutes suggested that a wildly popular DVD series called
Bum Fights was the principal catalyst for “bum hunting.”
Apparently, the producers of Bum Fights paid homeless individuals a
pittance (and bribed them with alcohol) to brawl and attempt
ridiculous stunts similar to those shown in the Jackass series.
Bum Fight movies also involve a character dubbed the “Bum Hunter.” In
producing Bum Fights, the “Bum Hunter” attacked randomly
selected sleeping homeless people, forcibly restrained them, and
sealed their mouths with duct tape.

23-year-old Ryan McPherson was the producer of Bum Fights. He
and two partners sold the rights to their creation for $1.5 million.
(4)Sixty Minutes interviewed two of their
victims, including a homeless man named Rufus, who confirmed that
McPherson paid them less than $10 and a “couple of beers” to fight and
do degrading stunts.

When Sixty Minutes interviewed McPherson, he had this to say:

“We’re merely exposing something that I don’t think a lot of people
know exists. I think it's interesting. I can't imagine what would make
somebody do the things that Rufus was doing to himself...”

Not surprisingly, McPherson claimed to see no connection between his
DVD productions, the millions of teens watching them, and the
proliferation of “bum hunting.” It is interesting to note that one of
the teens who participated in the slaying of a homeless person told
Sixty Minutes that he had watched Bum Fights “hundreds of
times” before the murder.

While the reprehensible McPherson and his grotesque digitally captured
exploitations of miserable souls almost certainly contributed heavily
to the popularity of “bum hunting,” McPherson, his perversities, and
“bum hunting” are merely symptoms of an insidious disease afflicting
the collective psyche of the United States at a profound level.

Beware the shadow…

It is true that since time immemorial, the wealthy and powerful of
human society have exploited and preyed upon the poor and vulnerable.
The tendency to abuse power is an inherent aspect of the shadow side
of each human being.

A spiritually healthy human being acknowledges their shadow side and
integrates it into their being, hence minimizing the shadow’s
destructive tendencies.

However, when repressed and denied, the shadow side of the human
psyche often manifests itself in a variety of violent and malevolent
ways. And throughout its history, social, economic, and political
forces in the United States have served to nurture the growth of the
collective national shadow into a loathsome monstrosity.

What feeds the beast?

Moral superiority has been a critical piece of the argument the United
States has used to justify the genocide of the Native Americans, the
enslavement of Black Americans, the support of numerous murderous
dictators supporting US interests in developing nations, unwavering
support for the Palestinian genocide, and the slaughter of millions of
civilians in imperial wars waged under the pretext of fighting for
freedom and human rights. People in the United States are
psychologically conditioned to believe that their nation is the
salvation of humanity and to ignore or destroy evidence to the
contrary.

Nearly endless streams of propaganda extolling the virtues of the
United States enable large numbers of US Americans to support a
ruthless empire because they believe it to be a benevolent superpower.
Aside from people suffering a serious deficit of conscience, those
living in a nearly perpetual state of denial are virtually the only
ones capable of pledging their loyalty to a nation with a predacious
foreign policy and a morally bankrupt economic system.

How else would one explain the corporate media and the Empire’s loyal
adherents celebrating Congress’ passage of the Military Commissions
Act as a “victory”? Even after viewing numerous explicit photos of the
blatant torture committed by the United States military at Abu Ghraib,
a frightening number of US citizens remain unperturbed by the fact
that a man who would be fortunate to flirt with a score of 100 on an
IQ test now has the power to define and authorize torture, to imprison
virtually anyone as a “terrorist,” and to negate Habeas Corpus.

Remember when the Magna Carta was the basis for our legal tradition?
How absurd that people actually believed that this excerpt from that
other “goddamn piece of paper” was a cornerstone of a just society:

No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned,
... or in any other way destroyed ... except by the lawful judgment of
his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none
will we deny or delay, right or justice.

Many in the United States have welcomed
shredding both the Magna Carta and the Constitution by entrusting a
feeble-minded tyrant with nearly absolute power. In their delusion,
Bush will protect the United States from the “evil terrorists” by
continuing to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings who
had nothing to do with 9/11. Denial is indeed a potent force. It
enables supporters of the Bush Regime to continue believing that they
live in a benevolent meritocracy that actively pursues peace, freedom,
and justice for the entire human race. And it prevents them from even
considering that they might become The Decider’s next victim.

And the profound suffering of the past, present, and future innocent
victims of the “Torture Bill” is not even on the radar screen of the
Empire’s loyalists. Empathy and compassion are scarce commodities
indeed in the United States. And why wouldn’t they be?

It is not a leap of logic to conclude that perceived superiority over
the rest of humanity, deeply rooted denial, an inculcated devotion to
rapacious capitalism, and the spiritual ills resulting from
“saturation therapy” combine to form a strong impetus for sociopathic
behavior.

Bludgeoning a defenseless human being to death is one such behavior
that immediately leaps to mind . . .

Genocide?

The United States has the financial resources to end homelessness
tomorrow through the intelligent use of public money. Instead its
decision-makers elect to line the pockets of corporate cronies and war
profiteers by pouring $600 billion per year into entities and programs
which exist to kill human beings.

By deliberately lavishing obscene sums of public money on the
murderous military industrial complex while seriously neglecting
programs to attack the root causes of poverty, the ruling elite of the
United States are waging an agonizing form of economic genocide
against homeless people.

Preserving the delusion

In a society that worships money, material success, youth, and beauty,
homeless human beings are anathema on several levels. Ultimately, to
preserve the delusion of the American Dream, those caught in the
American Nightmare must be eliminated in some fashion.

The number of US homeless people relative to the number of the
homeless in other developed countries exposes the brutality of the
United States’ “survival of the fittest” socioeconomic system.

Don’t think about them. You could become one of them.

The very existence of these indigent vagabonds reminds US Americans
how fleeting and unattainable the American Dream truly is.

Don’t look at them. You could become one of them.

3.5 million deeply impoverished human beings forage in garbage
dumpsters while heirs like the Waltons and the Mars hoard fortunes
large enough to sustain hundreds of thousands of people.

Don’t touch them. You could become one of them.

Homeless people are the antithesis of the American ideal. They are
often impoverished, unemployed (or under-employed), unattractive,
dirty, beaten down, and addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Kill them so you don’t become one of them.

If horribly misguided youths don’t eradicate our homeless population,
the United States’ woefully inadequate (and rapidly shrinking)
publicly-funded safety nets will leave homeless people wallowing in
their misery until they are dead.

All the while the wealthy elites of the United States will smile with
the satisfaction of homeowners who are successfully exterminating a
roach infestation.

And as each homeless human being dies, people like Barbara Bush will
have one less “blight” on which to focus their beautiful minds.

Jason Miller
is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself
intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically and his essays
have appeared widely on the Internet. He welcomes constructive
correspondence at
willpowerful@hotmail.com or via his blog,
Thomas Paine's Corner.REFERENCES